Virtual Private Network at home

Work is somewhat delayed by having to sort out a new mother board and a complete reorganisation of all my hard disks.

However, a silver lining: I've discovered that the OU provides an VPN service for anywhere, called Cisco Any Connect VPN, so rather than having the client only on the one machine, I think, if I have to go to my aged parents, I should be able to use this way to connect to my OU files. How helpful of the OU.

I wonder if it would work on my eeePC under Linux.

Assistive Publishing

The OU PhD skills web site pointed out the availability to students of a web site, intra or internet available through the LTS, but you have to find how to use the Assistive Publishing System (APS). So I've been on the course, done that - it's a very simple content management system so it's really easy to use, but doesn't allow much room to differentiate your site. That's fine because I'll just concentrate on the content. I want somewhere on the intranet site that I can put up papers, and documents that I can't put on this.

Now, though I can't think what I should put up - what would be useful?

Mobilising emotion or emotional mobilising?

Kristina Höök talked today about human centered computing using digital products that attempt to set the scene for emotional experiences. It was all a bit creepy. She gave examples of something called

• eMoto - that's a phone - if you used this dildo-like pen with your mobile phone, it would send your message in colour depending on your mood, or what you wanted to express - I'd be grey so as not to give away mood to any one but family -
• Affective Diary - you get some electronic gadget that reads measurements from a wrist-strap and turns them into not-quite-human blobs, whose colour is supposed to mean something
  

Needless to say, most of the computing chaps appeared from their body language to be a bit sceptical and disdainful of such equipment.

I can't quite see the use of it - but if given feedback I guess you could control your sweat and temperature - like you can control your blood pressure if you get feedback. So may be that's useful for controlling your stress levels.

Blogging research

Fascinated to read a conference paper on postgraduate blogs, found here (pdf). It's in paper 1150 by three fellow OU post grads who are a couple of years ahead of me and in a different faculty. But their experience is similar to what I'm finding. The blog is a

• space for writing, reflection
  
• a research journal but with search and sort functions and links
• a "memory repository"

Sometimes I've used it to provide notes on a session that others have missed, so I can share. Because it's open, I'm a little more careful with grammar and spelling and readability, and like to include pictures, or links, or something other than pure text.

However, those three PG blogged together, even having a collaborative blog, and I am not in such a community; I'm the only PG student in the OUBS to blog. I do find other PhD blogs, but not physically close to where I am.

What I like most and most hope to have from my blog is some interaction. So I've appreciated the people who've commented or got in touch. The three PG authors conclude

• universities should offer a blogging facility to research students
• supervisors should draw attention to the potential benefits of this method of keeping a journal
• authors of books on research methods should cover this area in some detail.

I don't think universities should necessary offer a blogging facility. I've used the OU one, and it's not good enough because it doesn't have a comment facility, which is really important if you want feedback.

My supervisors may not know what a blog is - I'm not aware that they read this, but they haven't discussed my using a research journal so the subject hasn't come up for over a year.

But yes, to the third recommendation - authors on research methods should cover this area in detail, because there are advantages to blogging, and with more PG students blogging in a community I could see more advantages .

Ada Lovelace Day

March 24 is to be Ada Lovelace day.



If you blog, will you join in too.

What's wrong with this proposal? or right?

I have to rush to get a proposal together for the May EURAM conference doctoral colloquium, which has to be in by 12 January along with:

• a letter of recommendation from my supervisors,
• my CV,
• my letter of motivation (what on earth is one of those!) and
• a signed statement stating that "in the case of acceptance for the doctoral colloquium I have the funding and will definitely participate in the doctoral colloquium".

So I've abandoned my transcribing and analysis, and have got the outline of my proposal together. It will be useful to submit it because if you get it in and accepted then they send it out to other participants to read and then you get feedback on it at the colloquium, and that could be really useful. Mind you, what I'm submitting is the proposal for the research that I've already started, and I don't have the time to submit findings, but by May, I'll have findings and a better idea of what I've found. Nevertheless, getting good feedback will be helpful and still in time to use it to amend research questions, case study approach or method of analysis or what literature I need. And they promise you that each discussion group is supervised by a senior researcher. It should be really useful. So I'll get opinions from several sensible people on what is wrong or right with my work.

If you're interested, here's the pdf for the doctoral colloquium. Will you be there?

New Year Resolution

This new year resolution has to be to get my research done, and written, not just collected, but analysed and written. And I can't write it until I've analysed it, so I'll just stop writing and analyse again. Having the analysis done helps avoid writer's block because analysis means putting something on paper, whether in a table, a matrix or just a scribble. Now, I have something already on paper:

• role analysis matrix,
• interview summary sheets,
• data accounting sheet
• network diagrams of relationships to compare with my theoretical ones
• and interim report that I'm writing up for supervisors

So I guess that sums up into just keep going, never ever give up.